It's true that Big Tech are not the most innovative companies around The linked article is about the many shortcomings that Google Password Manager has, and it is quite true that many of the dedicated password managers out there have way better features than Google has. It was for the same reason that I never used Google's Authentication app at all. The same went for their passkey management. Many Big Tech companies have millions or billions of funds to throw at buying out their competition, and to cobble products together. The reason they buy out their competition is, because the competition has something better that they cannot just use, unless they buy the business and own the patents. Often they even kill those products off, or they neuter them (like the original peer-to-peer Skype) and let them die off. Big Tech is no friend of innovation, and can use their financial (and other muscle) to kill off the competition. Anyone still remember the early days of Microsoft Windows when the deal was struck for discounting Windows with new PCs as long as the manufacturers only pre-installed Windows? I remember a government department having to also pay for Windows licenses for all their Linux computers (which had no Windows installed on them) because the licensing deal was “all” PC's irrespective of what OS was installed. This all helps us understand how the “Big” came about in Big Tech... But I digress, the point being actually Big Tech is really not that good at innovating, and this is especially true once their own founders have departed the organisation. Their founders were often the ones who were innovative (OK, excluding Microsoft) when they started out themselves. See

Android Police

6 reasons I gave up on Google Password Manager

Google Password Manager works, but it's just not good enough for me

#technology #innovation #BigTech

10 Tricks You Can Do With FFmpeg on Linux, macOS, and Windows Yes, FFmpeg is far from just being some plain copy or convert command. It is packed with powerful features and, in fact, sits in the background behind many fancy GUI applications, with FFmpeg during the work in the background. The linked article discusses how FFmpeg can perform the following features: * Playing a Video (yes, really!) * Get Media Information * Record Your Screen * Extract Images From a Video * Convert Images Into a Video * Convert a Video to MP3 or GIF (or other video formats) * Add Subtitles to a Movie * Rebuild a Video's Index Without Transcoding * Resize Videos * Trim and Crop Videos Some of these functions can consume a lot of CPU and memory resources, so it is also worth having a look for versions of FFmpeg that specifically use the GPU for extra horsepower. As one of my readers commented, when it came to malware, rather try to use existing OS tools to do what you need to. FFmpeg is one such tool when it comes to all things video and audio. See https://www.howtogeek.com/tricks-you-can-do-with-ffmpeg-on-linux #technology #FFmpeg #video

FBI warnings are true—fake file converters do push malware “The FBI is warning that fake online document converters are being used to steal peoples’ information and, in worst-case scenarios, to deploy ransomware on victims' devices. The warning came last week from the FBI Denver field office, after receiving an increasing number of reports about these types of tools.” It seems that many of these relate mostly to creating to or from PDF files, but really most good word processors already do that as a built-in function, e.g. free LibreOffice. See

BleepingComputer

FBI warnings are true—fake file converters do push malware

The FBI is warning that fake online document converters are being used to steal people's information and, in worst-case scenarios, lead to ran...

#technology #security #malware

Here's Everything You Can Do With the Ports on Your Monitor There is more to life than just HDMI, that's for sure. It is well worth reading this linked article before buying any new monitor or graphics card. Something interesting I learnt is that with DisplayPort there is the possibility of MST or Multi-Stream Transport where you can daisy-chain multiple monitors together with DP cables using only a single port on your GPU. Also, it's important, as it is with USB-C cables, to get HDMI cables that match the version of HDMI that the monitor supports. See

How-To Geek

Here's Everything You Can Do With the Ports on Your Monitor

Any port in a storm? No, you need to pick the right one!

#technology #monitors

The RingConn Gen 2 may be a good subscription-free alternative to the Oura ring A battery life of 10 to 12 days is pretty good (in reality it may only get 7 days), with a battery charging case providing an additional 150 days of power! But that is still longer than the Oura ring. Costing less than an Oura and also being subscription-free are more positives. It does apparently sync data to Google Fit, but not to Strava. So I'd be sure to check properly what services it syncs to. Today, the ideal is to sync to the global Apple Health and Google Health Connect services. I'd certainly not consider buying a ring with a monthly subscription payment, so next time around I'll be comparing this ring with the Galaxy Ring and other similar contenders. See

ZDNET

Ready for your first smart ring? Here's a subscription-free one I recommend

RingConn's second-gen smart ring is an accessible health tracker that's competitively priced and doesn't require a subscription.

#technology #health #smartring

WeatherSpark offers detailed reports of the typical weather for 145,479 locations worldwide The Weather Year Round Anywhere on Earth. Climate reports with the weather by month, day, even hour. Great for event and trip planning! This site does not give actual daily weather reports, but gives a more detailed view of the climate for every city. It will give a good idea of what sort of weather to expect if you are planning on travelling somewhere in future. It can also do a comparison between two cities. There is a toggle on the navigation bar to switch to metric values. See

World map of 24x365 average temperature fingerprints - Weather Spark

#technology #weather

8 Tiny Utilities to Make Your Linux Experience Even Better Some quite useful utilities here to: * prevent the screensaver coming on * adjust screen colours for night or low light * hide the mouse cursor when inactive * passing data through a UNIX pipe * a powerful filter tool for reading and searching lists * have multiple copy buffers * add intuitive trackpad gestures I have noticed though on KDE that there is a Clipboards Content icon by default on the toolbar, and you can quickly copy a few different snippets of text, and then by just clicking on each one it will put it back into the buffer for quick pasting. So, in this way you can copy a login ID and then password, go to another page, and paste them one after the other. See

Make Tech Easier

8 Tiny Utilities to Make Your Linux Experience Even Better - Make Tech Easier

Linux is an operating system that you can customize to your needs. Learn how to use these tiny Linux utilities to improve your system performance.

#technology #Linux

An NVMe drive is giving me 700% faster performance than my previous SATA SSD drive I just upgraded my main boot drive on my Linux desktop, from a 120 GB SATA SSD drive to a 500 GB NVMe SSD drive. Whilst it is true the Crucial CT120BX100SSD1 SSD was not the fastest SSD around, it shows a rating of max of 6Gb/s through the SATA interface. I'd expect many users also have slightly older SSD boot drives as well. Even though they are faster than spinning hard drives, the NVMe interface blows the socks off the SATA interface. The NVMe drive that I just fitted is a Samsung 970 EVO Plus 500 GB drive. It's not the world's fastest drive either, but sitting on the NVMe interface it is clocking a bit over 7x faster than the older SSD drive on the SATA interface. The NVMe drive is showing a sequential read speed of 3,523 MB/s compared to 464 MB/s for the SATA drive. Sequential write speeds are 3,124 MB/s compared to 180 MB/s. Both tests were run using KDiskMark. See

GadgeteerZA

An NVMe Drive Is Giving Me 700% Faster Performance Than My Previous SATA SSD Drive

I just upgraded my main boot drive on my Linux desktop, from a 120 GB SATA SSD drive to a 500 GB NVMe SSD drive. Whilst it is true the Crucial CT12...

#technology #SSD #NVMe

Use FilePizza App to Send Someone a File Without Using Any Cloud Storage “FilePizza isn't the only application like this. There's p2pfileshare.com and sharedrop.io, to name a couple. FilePizza stands out because of the simplicity—just share a file and copy the URL—and because it has a unique URL. These links only work as long as the computer is on and the browser window offering the file is open. Without a cloud service, it's on your device to share the file with whoever might download it. Close the tab, and the file is gone.” What is good about this app (as the article also says, not the only one that does this) is there is no uploading of your file to any remote service, and once you close the browser, the access to the file is gone. The best part is just having to remember the domain name and that is really all — no accounts, no login, no installations, no complications. See

Lifehacker

Use This App to Send Someone a File Without Using Any Cloud Storage

File.pizza is a web service that allows you to directly share a file from your computer with another device—no cloud storage or app needed. The n...

#technology #filesharing

Time to ditch US tech for homegrown options, says Dutch parliament “The motions were submitted and all passed yesterday during a discussion in the Netherlands' House of Representatives on concerns about government data being shipped overseas. While varied, they all center on the theme of calling on the government to replace software and hardware made by US tech companies, acquire new contracts with Dutch companies who offer similar services, and generally safeguard the country's digital sovereignty.” “With each IT service our government moves to American tech giants, we become dumber and weaker,” Dutch MP Barbara Kathmann, author of four of the motions, told The Register. The BRICS countries actually made this decision a few years ago, for the same reasons. Not all BRICS countries followed through on this, for example South Africa. But Russia, Brazil, China, and India had made quite a few strides towards even implementing their own desktop OS. But apart from digital sovereignty, the second issue is just as important regarding dumbing down of your own skills. This is something I have also blogged about with regard to outsourcing of services to any cloud provider. An organisation not only loses its ability to provide its own services, but finds it more difficult over time to even technically evaluate any IT offerings, as there are no longer any staff with real technical skills left. See

Time to ditch US tech services, says Dutch parliament

: Trump administration 'has made the call for tech sovereignty an urgent geopolitical issue'

#technology #outsourcing #cloudservices #digitalsovereignty

Photography Sim Games are now a Thing too I was just watching demos of two photography sim games, supposedly launching officially in 2025. But what stood out for me was that both involve walking through the wilderness in some really stunning scenery, and taking into account all the normal environmental variables and technical camera challenges, you need to capture the photos. So no rushing, racing, or shooting is required. “The in-game camera includes an abundance of settings that you’d expect from a real-world professional DSLR camera. The camera simulates settings such as Auto/Manual Focus, Flash, Exposure, Contrast, White Balance, Aperture, Burst Shot, and other effects for full creative control over your photography. The game further provides tools that allow for manipulation of the environmental conditions for your photos, such as manual adjustment of light angles, fog, snow, wind, and rain.” The two games I looked at are: * Lushfoil Photography Sim at

Annapurna Interactive

Annapurna Interactive

Annapurna Interactive works with game creators from around the world, helping them create and release personal experiences for everyone.

* Photography Simulator at

Photography Simulator

These look really relaxing, and it's also a great way to practice some skills before setting out in the real world to try to capture these types of scenes. #technology #gaming #photography

GIMP 3's New Features Make the Best Free and Open Source Image Editor Even Better “Among the biggest changes is nondestructive filters. Previously applying filters, such as blurs, was final—you could use the undo function to get back to a pre-filtered state, but you couldn't simply edit or remove the filter. You can now tweak the settings of filters, or even remove filters entirely from the layer panel.” The UI scaling is a lot better now, but I still struggle a bit with the interface, trying to find what I want to use. So I set a few tweaks and must say it looks a bit easier for me now. I included a screenshot with this post, but I set the Icon theme to Default (mine was on Legacy) and disabled the Use symbolic icons toggle. I toggled on the merge menu and title bar, and toggled off the Use tool groups. The last setting just makes it easier to scroll over all those icons to see what does what. See

Lifehacker

GIMP 3

New features in GIMP 3 include non-destructive filters, improved text editing, and simpler layer management. Working with filters, layers, and text...

#technology #opensource #GIMP

PeerTube 7.1 Expands Podcast 2.0 and Apple Podcast Support For those who don't know PeerTube, it is an open source decentralised alternative to YouTube with many of the same features. But importantly it also integrates with the Fediverse so anyone from Mastodon, Hubzilla, Friendica, etc can follow a channel on PeerTube and like and comment on the videos, all from the social network they call their home. “Recognizing that many people like to listen on the go, PeerTube has improved its support for Podcast 2.0 standards, ensuring creators can distribute and manage their shows more efficiently. Even better, these upgrades now enable channels to be submitted directly to Apple Podcasts, provided the channel owner has added the required banner, avatar, and description.” See

Linuxiac

PeerTube 7.1 Expands Podcast 2.0 and Apple Podcast Support

PeerTube 7.1 open-source decentralized video platform released with improved podcast support, better playback stability, and more.

#technology #opensource #decentralised #PeerTube

These 6 myths about gaming on Linux just aren't true (except one) For many (like myself) I had to dual boot into Linux years ago mainly because my higher end games did not work on Linux. As far as word processing and most other things, those all worked OK on Linux from way back already. But with Steam Games I found that Euro Truck Sim 2, Read Dead Redemption II, Assetto Corsa, SnowRunner, etc were all working fine for me on Linux, and my full transition was just fine. So if gaming is what still holds you back, this linked article may put some myths to rest for you. It's true there may be some specific exceptions still, but for most users, Linux should just be fine nowadays as far as gaming goes. Yes, some of the latest Adobe products may still not work on it, but Adobe is pricing itself out of its market for non-professionals anyway. See

XDA

These 6 myths about gaming on Linux just aren't true (except one)

Gaming on Linux has never been better.

#technology #Linux #gaming #myths

There is a lot of good news to be found outside of your social media feeds Contrary to what often gets surfaced in social media feeds, and many newspapers too, there is actually a lot of good news going around. Unfortunately, good news does not sell well at all, and it is usually clickbait headlines causing rage or anger, that seem to draw attention. It is for this reason that some social networks make a point of pushing these posts into people's feeds so that it increases engagement and drives comments etc. They design algorithms that analyse what buttons can be pressed to drive engagement and thereby surface posts that will do this driving. The alternative is a cleaner chronological feed just based on who you follow, and when they posted. These users may have a more positive experience depending on who they follow. Which is why many want to break away from watching traditional news channels and legacy social networks. There are actually many places dedicated to positive and uplifting news. Some are websites like:

The Optimist Daily: Making Solutions the News |

The Optimist Daily: Making Solutions the News

The Optimist Daily: Making Solutions the News - Positive News Stories

Good News Network

The Good News Network: Positive Stories 24/7

Your daily source for only good news: Inspiring stories and images from around the world will make you feel uplifted, optimistic and positive about...

Positive News

Positive News | Good journalism about good things

Positive News is the first media organisation in the world dedicated to quality, independent reporting about what’s going right

Whilst some are focussed Subreddits such as: https://www.reddit.com/r/goodnews/ https://www.reddit.com/r/UpliftingNews/ Fediverse https://kglitch.social/m/positivenews Fediverse upliftingnews@lemmy.world Bluesky also has two curated feeds called 'Positive News' and 'Uplifting and Good News'. To make this easier, you could also install or use an RSS reader which will bring various sources to you in one place, without all the distractions of visiting the various sites. There is also a hack at

How-To Geek

How I Use Reddit to Stay on Top of The News

Stay on top of the news the fun way.

which explains how to cobble a couple of different positive news Subreddits into a single feed to follow. #technology #positivenews #goodnews

‘Critical concerns’ about internet of things security “GlobalData’s Internet of Things report outlines that the fragmented security standards landscape and the weak security of many internet of things (IoT) devices could hold back further adoption of the technology. Furthermore, it suggests that existing IoT deployments could become a security risk due to the current state of affairs.” Way too many IoT devices have no real security (they don't get updates and patches, they freely call out onto the Internet, sometimes have no login security, use weak security standards, etc). It's partly because they are cheap devices and do not adhere to any strict security compliance. So whilst many users have a firewall turned on for their router, that usually only blocks incoming traffic. These IoT devices can still freely establish links with the outside world, and if compromised, could end up creatinga bridge to everything else on the LAN behind the firewall. Which is why I went to quite a bit of trouble to isolate my IoT devices onto their own VLANs. If you do not have the hardware to configure VLANs for them, at least ensure they are connected to your guest network, and that the guest network is isolated from the main LAN network (there is typically a toggle setting for that). See https://www.verdict.co.uk/critical-concerns-about-internet-of-things-security #technology #security #IoT

RCS Universal Profile 3.0 will fully encrypt texts between iPhone and Android “RCS messaging has been a hot topic of debate over the past couple of years, with Google leaving no chance of mocking Apple for refusing to adopt it — until it finally did with iOS 18 last year. However, Apple’s version of RCS came with a major catch: it lacked end-to-end encryption (E2EE), unlike what you’ve used on Android through Google Messages. That’s about to change, and it’s great news for your chats with iPhone users and mixed group chats.” What is quite obvious is that Google has rushed this implementation a bit. There is nothing wrong with wanting to have had this in place a year or two back, but the sad part (in my opinion) is that Google does not seem to have thought this out properly with regard to decentralisation and interoperability. It needed to have E2EE (in this day and age) and it could not just be Google managing the world's messaging, so it needed to allow for functionality across more than just a centralised service. Give the state of the USA and the UK around “backdoors” there will also be global concerns around how secure the service will be if the servers are hosted inside the USA or under the control of a US owned organisation. Also, will the service continue to be available if a trade, or other, war breaks out. Yes, I know everything is better than SMS, but still the design process is the chance to get all this right. But despite this, I'm happy to see RCS moving forward, and I'm hoping it fully replaces SMS at some point in the future for business notifications, and can be a common standard (versus all the different messenger services we see today, of which everyone is not on all the services). See

Android Police

RCS chats between Android and iPhone will be fully encrypted soon

Chatting with your friends with iPhones is going to get secure with strong encryption

#technology #RCS #messaging

An SSD docking station is a great idea to easily utilise replaced SSSD drives This is an interesting idea to use those SSD drives that you may have upgraded, because if an SSD drive is left for too many months without being plugged in, it can lose its data. This is an easy way to plug one or more in and use it for ad-hoc storage. It is true that a USB-C connector may have got much better speeds, but I suppose a USB-A connector provides maximum compatibility. See

ZDNET

Why this SSD docking station is one of the best investments I've made for my PC

This all-in-one docking station and external storage drive is a great way to expand both your storage and connectivity.

#technology #SSD #storage

OPNManager is a beta version Android app for the OPNsense firewall OPNManager is a streamlined, user-friendly application designed to simplify the management of OPNsense firewalls. Built with Tauri and SvelteKit, this cross-platform app provides an intuitive interface for users who need a more simplified alternative to the standard OPNsense web interface. It is not an official OPNsense mobile app but will use the OPNsense API to allow a user to view and manage some basic dashboard functionality. The dev is trying to get enough testers together (see on the r/opnsense Subreddit) and then the app can appear as a beta testing app on Android's app store. But if you look at the GitHub site you will see an Android APK release, as well as Linux releases including an AppImage so far. See https://github.com/Red-Swingline/OPNManager #technology #OPNsense #opensource

It's Already Worth Downloading the Mobile Epic Games Store “Google makes a bunch of its money through in-app purchases and virtual microcurrencies. Pay-to-win mechanics may be atrocious, but it's good for Google's bottom line. The more intrusive a game's monetization is, the more money Google stands to make. The Epic Games Store mobile app may be available for both Android and iOS (the latter only in the EU), but Android needs it more.” Apart from some free games, it is an interesting point made that Epic has more interest in providing quality games and not from profiting from ads in low quality games. More options for users is also a good thing. See

How-To Geek

It's Already Worth Downloading the Mobile Epic Games Store

Even though it's far from epic.

#technology #gaming